ḥalats

The lexica treat חֲלָצַיִם as a single noun for the loins, attested only in the dual and only ten times; BDB, HALOT, and DCH each give one entry with contextual extensions rather than separate homonyms. Three groupings are standard. First, the region itself as the site of bodily sensation: warmth under a fleece (Job 31:20) and the clutching of labor pains (Jer 30:6). Second, the waist as the place of the belt or the girded garment, where the noun stands with אֵזוֹר (Isa 5:27; 11:5) and with חגר (Isa 32:11), and where the divine speeches of Job carry the summons אֱזָר־נָא כְגֶבֶר חֲלָצֶיךָ (Job 38:3; 40:7). Third, the fixed formula יצא מחלצי, of a son or a dynasty issuing from a man's loins (Gen 35:11; 1 Kgs 8:19; 2 Chr 6:9), where the word serves as a discreet designation for the male generative region rather than for the organs themselves. In Isa 11:5 חֲלָצָיו stands in parallel with מָתְנָיו, the far more frequent term, and the lexica do not press a firm anatomical distinction between the two. Job 31:20 is the one syntactically contested line, since the loins are made the subject of a verb of blessing and commentators divide over the clause division; Clines surveys the options without emendation. The Greek ὀσφῦς renders both Hebrew words in the Septuagint and continues both the girding idiom (1 Pet 1:13) and the descent formula (Heb 7:5) in the New Testament, and the Aramaic cognate חֲרַץ appears at Dan 5:6.